It’s been 30 years since No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom” was released — the album that launched the Anaheim band into mainstream success, introduced the world to Gwen Stefani and sold over 10 million units, making it certified diamond according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.
“It was a remarkable moment in time, just working with the band and seeing what actually happened when everybody was on the same page,” Paul Palmer, the co-founder of Trauma Records who released the album, says.
But behind the scenes, the creation of the Grammy Award-nominated album was full of setbacks and strife, and the album almost didn’t get made as we know it. No one anticipated that the band’s fight for “Tragic Kingdom” would result in its 30-year reign as one of the most iconic records of the ‘90s.
“I’m proud to have been a part of a legacy moment such as ‘Tragic Kingdom,’ but at the same time, my connection to that time and the amount of work that went into the making of it, we never knew for a moment that it was going to take on the implications that we’re talking about right now,” says Matthew Wilder, singer of the 1983 hit single “Break My Stride” and the producer of “Tragic Kingdom.”
Interscope Records, the band’s original record label, had been unsuccessful in trying to set the band up with several producers, including Albhy Galuten of Bee Gees fame. In 1994, Wilder was tapped by Interscope’s A&R representative, Tony Ferguson, to produce the album. At the time, the band was composed of Stefani on vocals, her brother Eric on keyboards, Tom Dumont on guitar, Tony Kanal on bass and Adrian Young on drums.
No Doubt in 1995
(Eric Keyes)
“I drove down to Anaheim to meet Gwen and the guys, and the rest was history,” Wilder says. “We started almost immediately, getting into the garage, literally, and going through the repertoire, and slowly but surely we started chipping away at the rep and realizing that they needed to broaden their horizon, and it was my opinion — that I desired for on their behalf — that they could write more than just ska tunes.”
The garage that Wilder refers to was the garage at the home of the Stefanis, which was owned by their parents and located on Beacon Avenue in Anaheim.
“After No Doubt’s 1992 self-titled album, they were given money to do pre-production on what was to become ‘Tragic Kingdom,’ but instead of using that money to rent rehearsal space and book time to record demos, they bought all of the recording gear from Jim Dotson who owned South Coast Recording Studios,” says Eric Keyes, No Doubt’s official archivist and personal friend. “The garage at the Beacon house got a new door, was sound-proofed, and that became their practice space and where they tracked all of their demos.”
According to Keyes, after the band set up a recording studio at the Stefanis’, they wrote an innumerable amount of songs over the next two years, including ones that would later end up on “Tragic Kingdom”; however, the label was not showing support or enthusiasm for the material. It was during this same period that the band self-released some of that music in March of 1995, just a few months prior to the release of “Tragic Kingdom.”
“As they were writing songs and presenting them to Interscope, the big push was for them to write a hit that would get air play, so they wrote and wrote and wrote,” he says. “The album was taking a long time, and they had more than an album’s worth of songs that Interscope had passed on, so the band grabbed their favorites and released ‘The Beacon Street Collection.’”
By the time Wilder stepped into the picture for production on “Tragic Kingdom,” the band’s frustration had accumulated and was undeniably palpable.
“It all came from this energy of determination and they were convinced that they deserved to be playing on the world stage and worthy of having more attention from the label, and at every turn in the road, they hit a wall and a headwind that was just seemingly insurmountable, and I think that’s what was adding to their fire,” Wilder says.
Although the band was “incredibly ambitious,” he says the band wasn’t always receptive to his advice. Early on, they had a conversation about their musical direction, which Wilder says he and Ferguson — the latter of whom originally signed No Doubt to Interscope — wanted the band to expand. No Doubt brought up their following of more than 3,000 fans at the time as a reason to stay true to their roots, but Wilder instead encouraged them to evolve their sound.
Gwen Stefani of No Doubt on 8/9/96 in Chicago, Il. (Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage)
(Paul Natkin/WireImage)
“I said, ‘Well, my vision is that you’d have maybe 3 million or more, and I think that you should probably try to think outside the box and just try different things, you’ve got nothing to lose, you could always revert to what you know,’” he says. “I’m kind of putting a little sunshine and sugar on the way that this conversation went down, it wasn’t all that easy, it was a struggle, and ultimately, Eric, he quit halfway through the making of ‘Tragic Kingdom.’”
The eldest Stefani, who had co-founded the band and written the majority of their music, left and took a job as an animator on “The Simpsons.”
“Because the songwriting was going in a different direction, he was losing his grip I suppose, or his control of the direction of the band, and was very despondent about that and decided to just back out,” Wilder says.
Keyes also says that the creative process was a factor in Eric’s exit, yet it led to the creation of the most canonical songs on the album.
“With ‘Tragic Kingdom,’ everybody was throwing in, Interscope wanted a hit, which wasn’t the way the first album was made, which must have been frustrating to Eric, and by the midpoint of writing on “TK,” it was clear that it wasn’t just Eric’s songs this time around, it was all hands on deck,” Keyes says. “Tony and Gwen came in with ‘Spiderwebs,’ ‘Hey You’ and ‘Sunday Morning’ and Tom and Gwen with ‘Just A Girl’ and ‘Excuse Me Mr.’”
One particular memory stands out to Wilder during this phase — he remembers being at his home studio in the Valley one day and showing Ferguson some of the album’s rough mixes. When they got to “Don’t Speak,” which was originally written by Eric but was later reworked by the band, Ferguson made a crucial observation and proclamation.
“Tony said, ‘This is not the lead off track, but if we can get to this one, this is the record that’s going to take them around the world,’ and it was a prophecy he knew probably better than anybody — what we were sitting on at that point,” Wilder says.
Through all the setbacks and obstacles that the band experienced during this period, Wilder says it never lost momentum for its music and vision. The members navigated the complex production phase without losing sight of what was important to them.
“These were very, very hard-working scrappers, [with] almost like a punk mentality, and they worked really, really hard when people weren’t physically playing an instrument,” he says. “They were sitting on the floor, folding fliers for their mail-outs to their fans, to let them know what they’re up to, and they were all self-contained and incredibly ambitious.”
However, despite the band’s ability to adapt to all the changes and challenges, Interscope was proving to be difficult to please, with the label’s co-founder Jimmy Iovine not fully on board with the results.
“Iovine was ambivalent at best with the album, and taking the point even further, it’s my understanding he didn’t want to release the album and wanted to drop the band, because that’s what was hanging in the balance,” Wilder says.
Enter Palmer and his Trauma Records co-founder Rob Kahane. At the time, Trauma Records was a subsidiary of Interscope, and Trauma had had major success by signing Bush to its label, so Ferguson connected Palmer to the band to mix some songs on the album. That led to Palmer eventually taking over entirely from Interscope to release the record.
“[The album] was my cup of tea, I’d been in the record business probably 15 years by that time, so I could spot what I thought was good. … The record company, they weren’t quite as enthusiastic about it as I was, so I said, ‘I’ll take it,’ and that’s how it started,” Palmer says.
The Trauma Records co-founder says that by the time “Tragic Kingdom” landed on his lap, it was three-quarters of the way done, and among the changes he made was modifying “Just a Girl,” which he says initially had too many synths and he didn’t think it would work as it was.
“I was trying to manicure it into what was happening at KROQ at the time, that was my whole thing, because initially, KROQ wasn’t interested in the band,” Palmer says.
“Just a Girl” ended up becoming the album’s first lead single and was released Sept. 21, 1995.
“Within weeks, maybe months, the record was exploding at KROQ, and ‘Just a Girl’ was the first single, and they just kept throwing one single out after another, and then Tony’s prophecy came to pass when it finally got to ‘Don’t Speak,’ and that’s when the album just exploded into millions of sales,” Wilder says.
Keyes remembers how monumental it felt for the band to finally hear their music on the radio.
“I remember hearing ‘Just A Girl’ on the radio in Eric Stefani’s car while they were getting ready to play an in-store at Virgin Megastore in Costa Mesa, and that was huge, every time I see that scene in ‘That Thing You Do!’ with the band running around excited while their song is getting played on the radio for the first time, yeah that was it,” Keyes says.
No Doubt pose backstage at the Metro nightclub, Chicago, Illinois, August 9, 1996. Pictured are, from left, Tony Karal, Adrian Young, Gwen Stephani, and Tom Dumont.
(Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
Thirty years after the release and success of “Tragic Kingdom,” Wilder says he and Gwen recently connected via social media and finally talked about that complicated time in the studio.
“It was cathartic because she expressed that period of our working together as being a pivotal moment for her, in which she professes that she had learned so much through the making of that record and attributed it to my connection, so that was lovely to hear,” Wilder says.
The album went on to be nominated for best rock album at the 39th Grammy Awards and earned No Doubt a Grammy nomination for best new artist that same year. No one, not even Wilder, could have ever imagined the success of the album, and the legacy it’s had after all these years.
“Honestly it was such an odd record, and Gwen was such a unique singer, and we were doing things in our own little bubble. … There was no way that I knew that it was going to go on to be embraced and succeed the way that it did, I’d be lying if I said otherwise, right?” Wilder says.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
